Re: Does Searle's "Chinese Room" argument imply that consciousness is non-scientific?

forbisgaryg@xxxxxxx wrote:
On Sep 27, 11:19 am, tvashtar <tvash...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I don't see why this is even relevant. What matter if consciousness is
best described as emergent at the atomic, molecular, or logical unit
level - all that matters is that is is recognised that it is an
emergent property of interacting items. No matter what level you
choose to admit the emergence happens, we can conceivably set up an
artificial system to match it.

Upon what do you base this claim? This is where the rubber meets
the road. If you're doing Empirical Science then you will be
able to produce the tests and we can all conduct them. I see
no tests from the lot. All I see are religious assertions that
aren't backed by any evidence at all. That's the lesson of
Searle. Don't tell me you're doing science when you're doing
religion.

I assert that consciousness is physical. That means it can be tested by
science. All it requires is to stick probes into your brain and have you
report what conscious sensations you experience as a result. Feel free to
do the experiment and figure out for yourself what your own consciousness
is all about - nothing more, and nothing less, than neural activity in the
sensor to effector neural path.

Of course, we don't actually have to do this experiment because it's
already been done and we already know the result. Forcing the brain to
activate creates reports of conscious sensations in the subject - the brain
activity, is the conscious sedation they are reporting after all.
Surprise, surprise.

The only reason all these people keep suggesting these crazy ideas about
consciousness is because we haven't been able to do enough real science on
real human brains because humans don't tend to like having their brain's
played with and they don't like to see scientists playing with the brains
of other humans either.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@xxxxxxxx http://NewsReader.Com/
.

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